Shawn Watson hired as IU’s offensive quality control coach

Kevin Wilson recently added a man with 34 years of coaching experience to his staff.

Indiana announced Wednesday that former Texas offensive coordinator Shawn Watson has been named IU’s offensive quality control coach. The role allows Watson, who was let go from the Longhorns’ staff in December, to assist with all coaching duties except that which is directly involved with players. He can help with behind the scenes work and film review, among other responsibilities, but cannot recruit off campus.

Wilson’s experience with Watson goes back to Miami (Ohio), where the two worked together on the same offensive staff from 1990-93. Watson has served as an offensive coordinator at Colorado (2000-05), Nebraska (2007-10), Louisville (2012-13) and Texas (2014-15), where he was also the assistant head coach. He has experience coaching in 15 bowl games.

Watson replaces Courtney Messingham, who left IU in December to become the offensive coordinator at Montana State.

“I’ve known Shawn for a long time and am very pleased he is joining us,” Wilson said in a statement. “Shawn brings a strong pedigree as a former head coach and a coordinator at the highest level. The timing is perfect for him, and we are happy to add a big time coach.”

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14 comments

This is a good hire for several reasons and I am glad to see him joint the Hoosiers. First, if he can work with the QB’s [not sure the limitations of his position will let him] as he has proven he can make QBs more productive. Another good aspect is his experience as OC in case coach Johns decides to take another position in the future, IU will have a quality coach with experience to take over. One final point is that he can add input into decisions the coaching staff makes as the season goes along. Coach Watson has valuable experience that can do nothing but improve IUFB.

Offensive quality control coach? Who knew? Well, apparently a lot of people, but I’d never heard of such a thing. I guess there’s probably a conf. or NCAA rule about how many actual coaches can be hired, i.e., actual “coaches” with actua “duties” that actually “involve” actual “players.”

v-13: Given that he will have “coaching duties except that which is [sic] directly involved with players” it wouldn’t seem that Watson will be allowed to “work with the QB’s,” as you put it. “He can help with behind the scenes work and film review, among other responsibilities[.]” I guess “behind the scenes” means “not anywhere near a football field during practice or games.” Maybe he will work with virtual quarterbacks.

davis, my understanding is he can’t coach QBs on the field but I don’t know if that means he can’t work with them in film sessions or the classroom time at practice. Even if he can’t work with players in any context he will be a good addition with the work he can do to help the coaches formulating game plans.

Havard, IU has quality offensive football and I sure hope the new hires on defense brings about decent defense leading to quality defense in the next couple of years. I have given up hope that a DC can improve IU defense as much as he improved past teams he has coached but moving up to in the top ten of B1G defenses would be welcome. The news out of practice is good so far and I know how I saw him coaching the defense at practice was a big improvement over the past. Hey, maybe he can stop the injury bug the defense seems to have so IU will have a full strength roster to build the defense on.

Watson may be a good coach in that position. However, I hope he is never put into the position of calling IU’s offensive plays. His play calling for the Texas Longhorns was considered anything but good.

v-13: I dunno, sitting with players in the film room seems like it would be “direct involvement with players” to me. Unless he doesn’t actually speak with them and just monitors their facial expressions or reports back to Wilson which guys were nodding off, stuff like that. Anyhow, I’m just making fun of sports-speak whereby a “coach” by job description isn’t “directly involved” with players. What the heck kind of coach is that? Maybe he will just write them little mash notes and put them in their lockers.

KW’s contract spells out how many asst. coaches he can have, but it also provides that the IUAD can change that unilaterally if conf. rules change. Not being “directly involved” with players probably takes this Watson guy out of the asst. coach category of IUFB employee- which I presume to mean a couple of things; 1) this is a discretionary hire allowed by Glass ’cause there’s some money for it in the FB budget, and 2) programs like OSU and Meatchicken probably have armies of these types doing whatever it is that they do ’cause their discretionary budgets probably allow a lot more discretion than does IUFB’s discretionary budget.

I wonder what the total payroll comparisons would look like if you took out the head coach and his top coordinators?

For all the talk of our undersized players on Scoop, we should fully praise and acknowledge our ‘blubber of plenty’ and inventiveness using PEJD’s (performance enhancing job descriptions) to fatten up a payroll for one of the most unsuccessful football programs in all of D-1 Football annals.

H4H, to be fair the OSU list doesn’t include their weight coaching staff or their academic staff that works with players. You aren’t comparing apples to apples with these list. It still shows how much the programs have expanding the number of people involved with football [I would guess basketball is the same way] and you have to wonder if all the money spent is really needed to put a quality product on the field or court.

To be fair I know that colleges are getting more “students” that are not prepared for college so they have to assign more staff to get them up to doing college work. I know the coaching staffs have to do the same thing with some of their players and many of this students need one on one work with academic coaches. It is a shame that our society has gotten to this point but it is what it is.

Good find, vesusvius13. Hard to even fathom the payroll when you figure in all the “staff” positions as well….But think of the extra revenue that flows into a place like OSU Football to pay those salaries..? What do they put in the seats every home weekend in Columbus..? 100,000 fans per game?

One would think IU could run a little tighter ship for such a smaller bottom line to work with…..Six athletic trainers? Three strength and conditioning positions(two listed on “staff” positions)?

Have you ever dined at a Cheesecake Factory? If you have, I’m sure you’re familiar with their portion sizes ….When you order a pasta dish, it comes on this flying saucer called a plate….A salad for one basically arrives in a serving bowl.. You feel like a cheapskate when you share a dish with a dining companion, but the alternative is stuffing your face with unneeded calories, taking home a leftovers that will likely find your own garbage disposal in a couple days, or allowing Cheesecake Factory to toss it with the other 2000 lbs of nightly waste going into trash bags and headed for the landfills….

It’s all about the perception of value….Even with a quality product, Americans somehow believe merely having something “more,” in abundance, or bigger, is better. Inevitably, you spend more than you need to…You eat more than you need to…You overkill simple processes more than you need to……and then you go work for Congress. Why do our football programs(especially one that can’t fill the stands 60% most weekends), have to be built like Cheesecake Factory meets Congress?

We just keep passing the buck, layering on more fat and frosting, to build some sort of glorious perception that there is value simply because of that monster-sized plate, payroll, or 7000 lb. SUV we drive home?

And within all those names on coaching lists and staff members….And within all those gigantic scoreboards in each end zone…And within all the marketing and billboards…And within all carousel of coaching changes year after year…building new staffs with new assistants….? Within all that portion size, I still turn on an IU Football game and watch guys grossly lacking in the basics of squaring up, taking on a runner like you mean it, and making a simple tackle…. The simplest, leanest, most basic requirement in the game is still endlessly muffed within all those endless names on a serving plate…?

As you said…it’s no different in basketball.. How many names were on coaching lists and staff lists in the years we hung those banners? There is quite the high correlation between more fat and more clapping on a plate….The more fat, the less movement. Millions upon millions in payroll and we still can’t find a well designed play to inbound the ball from a baseline…We still can’t figure out a zone…We still get grossly embarrassed by teams from North Carolina…..Millions upon millions of fat …..Millions upon millions to over-analyze every stat….Thirty years of garbage disposal seasons.

We hear how much government needs cleaned up of its waste and fat? Best take a look in the mirror…Best take a look at the typical low income Walmart shopper with overflowing cart filled with crap that is simply purchased for a perception of value…or a perception of worth(wasteful spending because it’s not the quality of something that gives it value, but merely the excessive spending or amount in the shopping cart).

And don’t get me started with the slapping of wings…skyboxes, and pavilions…and additions…etc, etc,..to two stadiums that are basically reinvented dinosaurs…For all the dollars wasted in the gross overpayment of millions in salaries and staff for nothing much higher than mediocrity, we could have had new, beautiful, lean, modern stadiums top-to-bottom the best in the land.